• Home
  • Recipes
    • Vegan
    • Raw
    • Salad
    • Soup
    • Treats
    • Smoothies & Juices
      • My Awesome Smoothie Book
      • Favourite Products
      • Smoothie & Juice Recipes
      • Juicing Articles
  • Happiness
  • Adventures
  • Work with Me
smarterfitter

The Great Outdoors

This Year’s Garden

May 7, 2012 · By Monica Shaw

My Tiny Plot

This weekend I feel like I’ve finally got this year’s gardening project under control. Last month, I started my gardening year as I always do: overly ambitious, and with a clear leaning towards veg not ideally suited for the UK climate: aubergine, peppers, tomatoes, chillies … with a few nods to chilly Britain in the form of cabbage, beetroot, potatoes and beans.

French bean! Oregano from Carl
Cabbage Kestrel Seed Potatoes

But maybe I’m not overly ambitious at all – I’d rather believe I’m just ambitious. Because so far, I haven’t let anything escape, whither, or die (with the exception of a few cabbage sprouts that got slugged last week). And I’m especially optimistic with the arrival of an early birthday present from my sister: a mini greenhouse!

New mini greenhouse thing

My 2012 Gardening Setup

I have a large garden, but most of it’s grass, and the actual space for growing stuff is pretty small. Also, I rent so I can’t really do much about that.

That said, I’m working with a small raised bed and a bunch of containers of various sizes. To help things along, I’ve now got the greenhouse, which I’m totally in love with. I set it up this weekend and the temperature difference is noticeable. It’s like a little warm cozy den. I almost want to put a chair in there and hang out in it.

The greenhouse has also inspired me to resurrected my DIY polytunnel for the raised bed. Mediterranean veg will be mine.

DIY Polytunnel

What I’m Growing

Or at least trying to grow. The list:

Tomatillo reaching for the sky
Tomato:

  • ‘Gold Medal’ Bicolour
  • ‘Costoluto Genovese’ Tall Vine
  • ‘Latah’ Very Early Red
  • Moneymaker (good ol’ reliable)

Aubergine:

  • Brazilian Oval Orange
  • Rosa Bianca
  • Casper White

(I also tried “Striped Rose” and “Thai Yellow Egg” but those seeds fail to germinate.)

Cucumber

Chillis:

  • Serrano
  • Jalapeno
  • Orange Habanero
  • Canario Rocoto
  • Peppadew
  • Cheyenne
  • Pimienta Da Neude
  • Yellow Trinidad 7 Pot

Herbs:

Sugar Baby Watermelon

  • Parsley
  • Mint
  • Oregano (thanks, Carl!)
  • Dill
  • Rosemary
  • Thyme
  • Lavendar
  • Tarragon (thanks again, Carl!)

Everything else:

  • Tomatillo
  • Cucumber (‘Paris Pickling’)
  • Bell peppers
  • Cabbage
  • Perpetual Spinach
  • Beetroot
  • Radishes
  • Sugar baby watermelon
  • Pumpkin
  • Lettuce (thanks, Carla!)
  • Strawberries

Something I really like about this year’s garden is that it’s had so much input and inspiration from other people.

My sister gave me a mountain of seeds, including heirloom varieties of eggplant and tomatillo. Dan, who I met via Rachel through a Mexican cookery class at The Vegetarian Cookery School, sent me a heap of crazy chilli seeds to grow. Carl Legge has sent me oregano and tarragon from his own garden to continue growing here. And Carla Tomasi has sent me some fabulous summer and winter lettuce seed mixes which I fully intend to go to town with in the greenhouse.

Lettuce seed packets

How it’s all going

I’ve started most plants indoors and I seem to have covered almost every available windowsill with plant pots. The tomatillos and tomatoes are reaching for the sky. The aubergines are tiny, but show promise – today I thinned out these sprouts and planted them in bigger pots:

Eggplant to-be

The salad seeds from Carla have exploded into life:

Salad Leaves

The beetroot is looking pretty puny so far. I hope my installation of the DIY polytunnel will encourage them along:

Beetroot

Something is definitely eating my radishes:

Nommed on Radishes

Whatever it is doesn’t have the same taste in perpetual spinach. Here are some new sprouts, alongside what remains of last year’s spinach crop:

Perpetual Spinach

And there’s something about this cabbage sprout that makes me smile:

Cabbage

I’m fairly amazed that I’m already seeing French beans appear:

French bean!

And I’m a sucker for a gimmick. I bought a “grafted” bell pepper plant at Dobbies yesterday:

Grafted bell pepper

The pepper was a splurge. And I should point out one of my goals with this whole gardening stuff:

Saving money

I need to save money this year, not spend. And it would help me greatly if I could offset some of my grocery store spending with goodies from my own garden. This is where I’m hoping the greenhouse will really help. Even if I only filled it with lettuces and herbs, that would save me so much money. The trick will be keeping it producing on an ongoing basis, and producing ENOUGH food at that.

As a mostly vegetarian, I eat a ridiculous amount of vegetables. I especially seem to spend lots on salad and herbs. So one of my goals for this year’s garden was to grow a LOT of leafy veg, and to spend only where necessary.

So far I’ve managed to spend less than ยฃ20 – enough to buy some seed potatoes, salad seeds, the plastic cover for the polytunnel, some manure and of course, the vanity pepper. I’ve resisted the urge to impulse-buy pretty pots and “fun”-sounding seeds, opting to work with the seeds I have leftover from last year.

As far as growing enough lettuce to feed myself, well, I’m realising just how much space it would take to actually make that happen. I mean let’s face it, I could eat way more than this single pot of lettuce in one sitting:

Salad Leaves

But I’m going to go for it, which might mean getting clever with containers. To that end, this guy’s vertical garden is truly inspiring.

More pics of my garden progress on Flickr: Gardening 2012.

About Monica Shaw

Veg lover, dog owner, hill walker, wild camper, avocado addict, nerd. I write about how to be awesome through a "smarter fitter" approach to eating, drinking, living and working.
Learn More โ†’

Share

Share
Tweet
Email
Pin
Comment
Previous
Next

Comments Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Recipe Rating




  1. Isabel @ Fennel and Fern says

    May 7, 2012 at 9:32 pm

    Thanks so much for linking through to my blog: really appreciate it. Love your picture of your beans. It looks like you’re busy!

    Reply
    • Monica says

      May 8, 2012 at 4:44 am

      Thanks for stopping by and leaving a comment! Your blog is lovely. And yes, I’m very busy – but I like it that way. ๐Ÿ™‚

      Reply
  2. CountryWoodSmoke says

    May 7, 2012 at 10:27 pm

    Wow, what a wonderful selection of veg you are growing, some very similar to me, I grew Latah tomatoes last year, and they were wonderful. Those french beans are sooo early, lucky you ๐Ÿ™‚
    It’s great growing in raised beds, I love mine.
    Cheers
    Marcus

    Reply
    • Monica says

      May 8, 2012 at 4:43 am

      I think I might start sprouting another set of French beans – try to keep em’ going throughout the season. I wish I had more than the one raised bed though. But like I said, I’m not spending any more money! We’ll see how I go with what I have.

      Reply
  3. Jes says

    May 8, 2012 at 5:12 pm

    Your garden, I love it! And at only $20 (pounds, I know, but that symbol is a pain to type) you’ve beat us by…oh, god, don’t want to add up. Our garden is completely expensive…hopefully in two years or even three it’ll pay itself off! Can’t wait to get plants in the ground–you’ve really got a leg up on me!

    Reply
    • Monica says

      May 8, 2012 at 6:53 pm

      Having seen the pics of your amazing raised beds, I’m sure it will pay off in spades. Can’t wait to see it take off!

      Reply
  4. Honest College says

    May 14, 2012 at 4:54 pm

    The process of growth is so splendid! Bet you look forward to seeing the progress each day ๐Ÿ™‚

    Reply
  5. Steve Shaw says

    May 20, 2012 at 2:40 pm

    The garden is very impressive. We are just getting ours started in the back of the yard! Yours is already sprouting. We are now into the hot weather, early, it was 90 degrees yesterday and today.

    Reply
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter

Search





Instagram

Unable to communicate with Instagram.

Follow Me!

About

  • About
  • Work with Monica
  • Contact
  • Smarter Fitter Smoothies

Follow Me

  • Facebook
  • Flickr
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter

Search

Subscribe

Buy my book

Smoothie eBook

Copyright 2023 smarterfitter